Powder snow from a machine?

A Veteran Snowmaker On the Future of Skiing

Robin Smith, 70, got his start as a
ski instructor at an upstate New York ski hill called Swain Ski Center
in the 1970s. He went on to own and run that resort for over 20 years
and installed the area’s original snowmaking system. When Intrawest
bought Mountain Creek, an urban ski area in New Jersey, in the late
1990s, they called up Smith to run the place and help solve their
snowmaking woes.

Smith, now in business development for the Italian
snowmaking company TechnoAlpin, has since become one of the ski
industry’s most veteran snowmaking consultants and pioneers. He
currently lives in Englewood, Colorado. “Robin knows how to look at your
snowmaking system and quantify it,” says Dennis Harper, snowmaking
manager at Idaho’s Sun Valley ski resort. “He’ll tell you how much snow
you need to make and how much it’s going to cost to make your resort
run.”Read on...